Barmy
containing or resembling barm; frothy.
British Slang. balmy (def 4).
Historical Examples
A man shall not be choak’t With the stench of garlic, nor be pasted To the barmy jacket of a beer-brewer.
Shakespearean Playhouses Joseph Quincy Adams
“If you ask me, I think the blighter is barmy,” asserted the Briton.
The Unspeakable Perk Samuel Hopkins Adams
Well, then, hall Hi can say his hit sounds like barmy Yankee nonsense to me.
The Glory of The Coming Irvin S. Cobb
None of them except barmy Sid once visited his rooms; nor did he find it at all easy to strike up even a staircase acquaintance.
Sinister Street, vol. 2 Compton Mackenzie
adjective -mier, -miest
(slang) eccentric or foolish Also balmy
adj.
1530s, “frothing, covered with barm;” see barm + -y (2). Figurative sense of “excited, flighty, bubbling with excitement” is from c.1600. Meaning “foolish” (1892) is probably an alteration of balmy.
adjective
Mildly crazy; cracked: One of your balmier notions
[first form chiefly British 1600+, second 1800s+; fr barm, ”froth on fermenting beer,” hence ”flighty, ditsy”; fell in with balmy, said to be fr St Bartelemy, the patron of mad folk, perhaps because the words are homophones in British English]
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